Sharada, Kashmiri & Sanskrit

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Vowel sounds

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	retroflex	palatal	velar	glottal
stops	p b	t d			ʈ ɖ		k ɡ
aspirated	pʰ	tʰ			ʈʰ		kʰ
affricates		t͡s		t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
aspirated		t͡sʰ		t͡ʃʰ
fricatives			s z	ʃ				h
nasals	m		n
approximants	w		l			j
trills/flaps			r

Kashmiri has no voiced aspirated sounds.

Vowel summary table

This table summarises only basic vowel to character assignments. Click on the phonetic transcriptions for more detail.

ⓘ represents the inherent vowel. Diacritics are added to the vowels to indicate nasalisation (not shown here).

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Inherent vowel

𑆑 ka

The inherent vowel for Sharada consonants is a, and ka is written by simply using the consonant letter, eg.

𑆑𑆩𑆬

Since Sharada consonants normally include an inherent vowel, the orthography has ways to indicate a consonant that is not followed by a vowel sound. See novowel.

Vowels after consonants

Vowels after consonants are written using using vowel signs. All vowel signs are combining marks. There are no multipart vowels and no circumgraphs. There is 1 pre-base vowel sign.

All vowel signs are typed and stored after the base consonant, and the rendering process puts them in the correct place for display.

Three vowel signs are spacing combining characters, meaning that they consume horizontal space when added to a base consonant.

Kashmiri-specific vowel signs

The Kashmiri language contains a number of additional sounds that do not appear in Sanskrit. Representation of those sounds has varied in the past, but recently agreement was reached to use an additional set of vowel signs to cover them. Those vowel signs are not yet encoded in Unicode (due in version 17), and are not available in the font used for this page, but the list will be as follows. The actual shapes are shown in fig_kashmiri_vowel_signs.

𑭢,𑭣,𑭤,𑭠,𑭡,𑭥,𑭦,𑭧

Previously, other diacritics were used to help write the vowel sounds that occur in Kashmiri but not in Sanskrit. Pandey found no evidence of their use after the beginning of the 20th century. These diacritics include 𑇋 and 𑇌. For more information about them, click on their names or see Pandeypk.

Standalone vowels

Sanskrit standalone vowels are written using a set of independent vowel letters. The set contains a character to represent the inherent vowel sound, and 2 letters representing diphthongs.

However, the additional vowel sounds in Kashmiri are represented by 3 of the above letters combined with a vowel sign listed in kashmiriV. The following list contains the standalone vowel representations for the additional Kashmiri vowels. Rajan lists alternative base letters for ɔ and ɔː.

fig_kashmiri_vowel_signs shows the actual shapes.

Vowel sounds to characters

Visible virama

Sharada uses 𑇀 to indicate that there is no inherent vowel after a consonant.

The virama is often visible in Sharada text. It is unusual in that it appears to the right of the consonant whose vowel it cancels, much like a letter.

𑆃𑆧𑆾𑆢𑇀

𑆑𑆳𑆯𑆶𑆫𑇀

When it appears, it is often after a word-final coda. However, out of 47 terms currently in the term list that end with a consonant sound, 29 have no virama at the end, while 18 do.

A visible virama also occurs in the sequence 𑇀𑆪𑇀 at the end of a word, which is used to represent palatalisation.

Conjuncts

To produce a conjunct, 𑇀 is added between the consonants in a cluster. When a conjunct is formed, the virama itself is not displayed. For example:

Sharada fonts normally stack the component consonant letters, using reduced glyphs for the non-initial consonants.

Whether the virama is visible or not in consonant clusters depends on the font used. Only a small number of clusters are rendered as conjuncts in the Noto Sharada font, whereas the Satisar Sharada font appears to represent all clusters as conjuncts.

The Noto Sans Sharade font commonly uses a visible 𑇀 between consonant letters to indicate the absence of the inherent vowel. The Noto Sans Sharada font currently shows only the following combinations of CvC as stacked. The other combinations have a visible virama.

Conjuncts can include a sequence of 3 consonants, each separated by a virama. The sample text at the top of the page has a conjunct with 3 consonants.

𑆯𑆶𑆢𑇀𑆣𑆱𑆠𑇀𑆠𑇀𑆮𑆱𑇀

See a table of 2-consonant clusters.
The table allows you to test results for various fonts.

Pandey's proposal documentp,41-42 contain a list of many more conjuncts on pages 41–42, including a number of 3 consonant conjuncts.

Avagraha

Sharada uses 2 characters to indicate sandhi. 𑇁 represents the elision of word-initial a, and is a spacing letter written on the baseline, but (unlike Devanagari) not joining the headstroke. 𑇉 is a combining character, written in some manuscripts below the syllable following the location of external sandhi. In some cases, it may be written twice to indicate sandhi between 2 long vowels. For examples, see Pandeypsan.

Consonant summary table

This table summarises only basic consonant to character assignments. Click on the phonetic transcriptions for more detail.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Basic consonants

The following is a list of basic Sharada consonants. All of these are used for Sanskrit, but not all are used for native Kashmiri words.

Click on each letter for more details and for examples of usage.

The list of sounds used for native Kashmiri words doesn't include voiced aspirated consonants and a few others. The following is likely to be a basic set for Kashmiri.

Palatalisation

Palatalisation is a frequent feature of Kashmiri words. It is represented using 𑆪 as the final element of a consonant cluster.

Inside a word the YA forms a conjunct or a cluster with the preceding consonant.

𑆒𑇀𑆪𑆩𑆳

At the end of a word, the YA is followed by a visible virama.

𑆄𑆯𑆤𑇀𑆪𑇀

Since they are palatal sounds, the YA is not needed after the following consonants.

Raised letters

Two letters representing allophonic variants of h in consonant clusters require special handling. In both cases, the letter is rendered above the following consonant letter. Although the standalone rendering of these characters looks like a combining mark, both actually have a General Category value of letter.

𑇂 represents the sound x before k or kʰ.

𑇃 represents the sound ɸ before p or pʰ.

Grapheme clusters do not separate the 2 letters in these sequences.

Observation: The placement of certain vowel signs in the Noto Sans Sharada font marks these combinations out as different from normal conjuncts, since the jihvamuliya is sometimes separated above the vowel-sign for the first two examples in the list above. Similar placement occurs for upadhmaniya, too.

Onsets

Clusters of consonant letters at the beginning of an orthographic syllable are handled as described in the section clusters.

𑆒𑇀𑆪𑆩𑆳

𑆥𑇀𑆫𑭣𑆠

Sharada appears not to use a special rendering for medial r.

Codas

Wiktionary data shows some words that end with a consonant letter and a following virama (link), but other words that end without the virama (link).

Sharada also has 2 dedicated characters for syllable codas.

11181 represents a nasal that is homorganic with a following consonant. It is positioned over the previous consonant or vowel sign.

𑆒𑭣𑆁𑆖𑇊

𑆃𑭠𑆁𑆘𑇊

Observation: When using the Devanagari script, the visarga is not used in Kashmiri. That may also be the case for Sharada. Research needed.

Consonant length

Gemination and consonant lengthening are handled using the normal approach to consonant clusters (see clusters).

Consonant sounds to characters

OM

The Sharada Unicode block contains an atomic character to represent OM, 𑇄, but recommends that a decomposed sequence be used, instead, ie. 𑆏𑆀. The atomic character and the sequence are not canonically equivalent.

It is also possible to find the sequence 𑆏𑇏 as a spelling for OM.

Confusables & spelling errors

This table lists characters that are often mistakenly used because they look the same as or similar to other code points that should be used, or perhaps because the correct character is not available on the user's keyboard.

False friends

The following atomic characters look as if they could be composed of parts, but in fact there is no equivalence during normalisation, and so the atomic characters only should be used.

Codepoint sequences

Combining marks always follow the based character.

Glyph joining

Most consonants have a headstroke. In some cases all headstrokes in a word join (like in Devanagari), but Pandey describes other approaches where Sharada consonant headstrokes may join only with dependent vowel signs, or may join in an arbitrary fashion.p,18 The examples just below (using the Noto Sans Sharada font) are of the second type. The gaps probably make it easier to read text such as in the first example below, because Sharada has a number of vertical lines that could be confused.

𑆯𑇀𑆮𑆒𑆶𑆫

𑆑𑆳𑆯𑆶𑆫𑇀

Alignment of the top bar may be appropriate when mixing text of different sizes (see initials). Also, when Sharada text is mixed with another script that also has a top bar, such as Devanagari, the top bars of both scripts may need to be aligned.

𑇜 is a headstroke continuation mark that is used to join letters across imperfections in the writing surface, such as are found in birch-bark manuscripts.ph It does not appear to be used for indicating gaps and omissions.

Context-based shaping & positioning

Word boundaries

In modern Sharada texts word boundaries are indicated by spaces. However, in some manuscripts a punctuation mark was used instead, though not always consistently, to mark word boundaries. For this, Unicode provides the 𑇈. Pandey provides an example of usage.p,21

Graphemes

tbd

Phrase & section boundaries

Sharada uses dandas, and more modern texts use some Latin punctuation.

The following punctuation characters have been seen while researching Sharada text for this page. There are likely to be more.

𑇞 and 𑇟 are used to indicate the end of a section of text. For examples of usage see Pandey.

𑇍 is a sutra end mark, used in ancient manuscripts, especially the Bakhshali Manuscript (2nd-4th centuries CE) to indicate the end of a sutra, or 'rule'.psut

Quotations & citations

The following characters have been noted during research into Sharada texts for this page. More characters may be relevant here.

Abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition

𑇇 in the Sharada Unicode block is commonly used for abbreviationsp,21.

𑆮𑆴𑇇𑆱𑇇 𑇑𑇐

Line breaking & hyphenation

Modern Sharada is normally wrapped at word boundaries.

Reproduction of archaic manuscripts which do not have spaces between words will need to break after 𑇈 or 𑇝.